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00NOUGAT BOUTIQUE
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Viruta Lab carries out bespoke architecture and interior design projects for boutiques: distinctive spaces with reduced dimensions and plenty of personality. The work at Nougat Boutique Dulce transports every visitor to those favourite summer nights spent on their grandparents’ front porches.
Working in architecture for boutiques is a real passion for professionals who, like Viruta Lab, combine technique, inspiration and memory in every project.
Evoking the smell of fresh, homemade bread, pancakes with sugar, and lemon yoghurt cake, straight from the oven. All these aromatic perceptions form part of the sensorial image of this space. These are unmistakeable scents that take you back to one of those summer afternoons of yesteryear.
Remembering childhood scenes enjoyed in our grandparents’ villages. Moments in which, for example, the sunbeams catch us by surprise, sitting on the faded green porch. Curled up on the wicker rocking chair with its houndstooth cushion, always sprawled out on the floor; this is where we felt at home.
Nougat Boutique transports visitors to these memories thanks to its traditional sweet baking. Originally, because of its bare floors and concrete structures, this was a cold place, disconnected from this emotional essence of the past. Now, it’s all changed.
Savouring the mouth-watering treats on offer envelops pastry-lovers in a unique sensory warmth. Despite the shop’s modernity, here, customers feel themselves transported to that shared scene of beautiful, emotional and personal memories.
Several considerations were featured in this boutiques’s interior design transformation. The first concerned its cupboards and new pine-wood cladding, offering familiar and natural nuances.
Removing stainless steel and neutralising the shop’s initial palette of greys was another of our creative strategies. This offered the space a more domestic scale, reinforced by a welcoming interior design with traditional references.
The Viruta Lab creative team decided to add a wicker grid to the ceiling, over several levels, to change customers’ spatial perceptions. Its presence creates a subtle effect of seclusion, as it lowers the height of the premises, without creating any feeling of heaviness.
This way, those who pass through the premises can experience a warm veil over their heads, which acts as a counterpoint to other similarly crafted details. In particular, the door to the toilets and the bar area stand out. Another advantage of these veils is that they help to diffuse artificial lighting sources, creating a more homogenous lighting effect.
